For 18 years, Christine Fahlund has been giving clients of T. Rowe Price retirement advice. Now at age 69, Fahlund is planning to retire herself, on June 2, from the Baltimore mutual fund giant.

I asked Fahlund, who calls herself a "very senior financial planner," what she has learned about retirement and whether she plans to practice what she has been preaching. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for clarity.

Q:What's behind your decision to retire?

A: I have been encouraging pre-retirees to make sure they are prepared not just financially but also emotionally for retirement. I have absolutely loved what I do, I'm passionate about it. To give that up just wasn't in my nature. But we were doing a lot of reorganizing and I decided this would be a good time to retire.

Q:What strategies have you learned from your job that you plan to use in your own retirement?

A: Last year, I helped develop the Social Security Benefits Evaluator (an online tool). I'm so glad I did all that study and understood the "file and suspend" strategy to obtain spousal benefits. This is what my husband (a retired college administrator) and I are doing.

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A: This works for couples if both spouses worked in Social Security-eligible jobs and their goal is to maximize benefits.

When the first spouse - let's say the husband - reaches full retirement age, he files for Social Security but immediately suspends payment so his wife can get spousal benefits when she hits full retirement age.

Full retirement age varies depending on your year of birth but let's say it's 66 for both spouses. (For each year past full retirement age that you delay the start of Social Security, your benefit goes up by 8 percent until age 70, at which point payments max out, except for any inflation adjustments.)

When the wife turns 66, she files for and begins to receive spousal benefits, which are one-half of what her husband would have received at age 66.

When the husband and wife turn 70, they each file for their own benefits, assuming the wife's own benefit is more than her spousal benefit. The four years of payments she received between ages 66 and 70 are gravy.

I think this is what President Obama alluded to when he said he wanted to tighten up some Social Security rules, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

People can see how this strategy would work by using our online tool and clicking the box that says, "We want to get the maximum benefit possible."

Q:T. Rowe Price has long recommended that retirees withdraw 4 percent of savings per year. Is that still is a good rule of thumb?

A: Yes, but it works like this: Your first year of retirement you withdraw 4 percent of your savings, then increase that amount each year for inflation. If you have $500,000 saved, you withdraw $20,000 the first year. If inflation is 3 percent, the second year you take out $20,000 times 1.03 or $20,600. The third year, you take out $20,600 times 1.03, and so on.

We were some of the first to use Monte Carlo analysis to test this strategy in thousands of different market scenarios. We found that you have an 80 to 90 percent chance of not running out of money after 30 years.

Within the last year or so, there has been a lot of debate as to whether you can still afford that approach, given that interest rates and dividends have been low. We stand by the 4 percent rate. Yes, this has been one kind of market, but what we project for our investors is not based on one kind of market.

Q:Is this what you plan to do?

A: Yes, but by working until age 70, our retirement is shortened from an estimated 30 years to 25 years, meaning we will be able to withdraw closer to 5 percent in our first year of retirement.

Q:How did you get emotionally prepared for retirement?

A: I'm not sure I am. I kept thinking every day what it would be like if I weren't doing my job, if I were traveling but not for business, if I weren't working way later than 5 p.m. What would it be like if I weren't that energized, that passionate. What will it be like to be with my husband 24/7? But I think I'm ready.

I have many hobbies. I want to do more photography, I have a grandson, we bought a travel van (a Mercedes Roadtrek). I want to finish a book I have been writing (a biography of Lena Stoiber, a four-times married Titanic survivor whose life spanned most of the 20th century). My husband is helping me with the research.

Q:What's the best thing people can do to get ready for retirement?

A: Save early, often and as much as they can. Carve out what you need to save for retirement and live on the rest, rather than spend what you need and save whatever is left over. After the toys, the car that's too expensive, there isn't much left.

I was blessed to have started taking (financial planning) in my early 30s and started accelerating my savings. Now, I'm almost 70. That's a long time for money to be growing tax deferred.